Group items tagged

The Social Web has given rise to a new form of linking, inter-personal links within the Social Graph. “You follow me, I follow you” is a personification of ‘old school’ reciprocal linking. The domain is no longer the ‘back link’; it is the ‘personal’ connection in the Social Graph. It could be argued that this is just good social graces, I’m interested in you, and therefore you should express and reciprocate the same interest. As with link farms and link spamming in the “pre-Social Web”, we are of course seeing a volume of similar misbehaviour affecting the Social Graph across today’s Social Platforms.

The principle of the experiment is “more easily find relevant blogs, reviews and other public content from your social circle”. The social circle is determined by the Social Graph, for the purposes of this experiment being links and connections found within Google Profile. In my case this points to all of my Social Site presences such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. You begin to see the potential, the more I am connected within the ‘graph of others’ the more likely that my recommendations and interests show up in the Social Search results of others (establishment of motive and opportunity). Manipulation of this centrality might therefore yield increased influence or (heaven forbid) opportunity to drive monetisation through questionable affiliate schemes. This presents problems; new motivations to drive hyper-connectivity (now inter-personal), a need to filter the Social Graph and the Social Search results and clear them of the behaviours associated with such manipulation.